Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

The best things in life are shared?

Sex sells, or so we think. Hultin and Lundh (2004) interviewed young men and women on their perceived effects of sex in advertising and their opinions on the given products afterwards. Although most of the participants initially claimed that sex in advertising would affect them positively; especially young males, if it was too explicit it caused disgust and the most pronounced negative effects of over-sexualisation were actually found in the group that perceived sex as a good selling point.
Clearly, this advert is overly sexualised and would be likely to disgust as opposed to sell, especially in the target audience; although some researchers claim further research is needed to support this claim (see Reichert, 2002).

Hultin, M. & Lundh, E. (2004). Sex in advertising: How it influences young men and women.